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· Year: 1997
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· Not sold in stores; only available as a promotional release.
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Screen Archives
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| Synopsis |
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Orchestral music that accompanied the 1997 miniseries adaptation of The Shining.
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Nicholas Pike faced what must have been a daunting challenge in scoring the Shining miniseries. Though it is immeasurably closer to Stephen King's vision of the story, everyone involved with the series had to know it would be compared to one thing: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. More to the point, Pike's score would be compared directly to Kubrick's choice of music for his Shining, most notably its theme, the chilling adaptation of Berlioz's "Dies Irae." Pike wisely sidestepped the issue by simply doing what was appropriate--he composed his score for The Shining on a level of human emotion and not of epic horror. His work is at turns eerie, sad, hopeful, happy, menacing, and any one of a hundred other emotions--an excellent encapsulation of a complex story. Although the arrangement of the music betrays its television origin more than, say, W.G. Snuffy Walden's work in The Stand did (Walden deliberately chose a small, homey, guitar sound), Pike uses his resources reasonably well. He raises the ante on even the traditionally "fright" pieces by injecting unsettling undertones into each of them, or, as in track fifteen, by using unsettling percussive hits. In another interesting move, but not one that's surprising considering its importance in horror, the jarring strings that Bernard Herrmann was so fond of using in Psycho jangle our nerves every so often (notably, in track eight). Really, although it has a good amount to offer, Pike's score for The Shining works best when it's melancholy and introspective--my favorite mood.
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